The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama [131]
But with the end of the Cold War, Washington’s attitudes began to change. The State Department began pressuring Indonesia to curb its human rights abuses. In 1992, after Indonesian military units massacred peaceful demonstrators in Dili, East Timor, Congress terminated military aid to the Indonesian government. By 1996, Indonesian reformists had begun taking to the streets, openly talking about corruption in high offices, the military’s excesses, and the need for free and fair elections.
Then, in 1997, the bottom fell out. A run on currencies and securities throughout Asia engulfed an Indonesian economy already corroded by decades of corruption. The rupiah’s value fell 85 percent in a matter of months. Indonesian companies that had borrowed in dollars saw their balance sheets collapse. In exchange for a $43 billion bailout, the Western-dominated International Monetary Fund, or IMF, insisted on a series of austerity measures (cutting government subsidies, raising interest rates) that would lead the price of such staples as rice and kerosene to nearly double. By the time the crisis was over, Indonesia’s economy had contracted almost 14 percent. Riots and demonstrations grew so severe that Suharto was finally forced to resign, and in 1998 the country’s first free elections were held, with some forty-eight parties vying for seats and some ninety-three million people casting their votes.
On the surface, at least, Indonesia has survived the twin shocks of financial meltdown and democratization. The stock market is booming, and a second national election went off without major incident, leading to a peaceful transfer of power. If corruption remains endemic and the military remains a potent force, there’s been an explosion of independent newspapers and political parties to channel discontent.
On the other hand, democracy hasn’t brought a return to prosperity. Per capita income is nearly 22 percent less than it was in 1997. The gap between rich and poor, always cavernous, appears to have worsened. The average Indonesian’s sense of deprivation is amplified by the Internet and satellite TV, which beam in images of the unattainable riches of London, New York, Hong Kong, and Paris in exquisite detail. And anti-American sentiment, almost nonexistent during the Suharto years, is now widespread, thanks in part to perceptions that New York speculators and the IMF purposely triggered the Asian financial crisis. In a 2003 poll, most Indonesians had a higher opinion of Osama bin Laden than they did of George W. Bush.
All of which underscores perhaps the most profound shift in Indonesia—the growth of militant, fundamentalist Islam in the country. Traditionally, Indonesians practiced a tolerant, almost syncretic brand of the faith, infused with the Buddhist, Hindu, and animist traditions of earlier periods. Under the watchful eye of an explicitly secular Suharto government, alcohol was permitted, non-Muslims practiced their faith free from persecution, and women—sporting skirts or sarongs as they rode buses or scooters on the way to work—possessed all the rights that men possessed. Today, Islamic parties make up one of the largest political blocs, with many calling for the imposition of sharia, or Islamic law. Seeded by funds from the Middle East, Wahhabist clerics, schools, and mosques now dot the countryside. Many Indonesian women